Sunday, July 5, 2009

I have a curious mind and so i thought of finding out the first patent applicant in india. I searched for it and finally found it in a newspaper article.[Source: The Hindu]

It says George Alfred DePenning made the first application for a patent in India. The patent granted was for "A punkah pulling machine".

History:

The first Intellectual Property Rights legislation was enacted in India 150 years ago. The development of the IPR legislation in our country has been in parallel with the international scenario. The Act relating to Patent Rights introduced in 1856 granted exclusive privileges to the inventor of new methods of manufacturing for a period of 14 years.

This Act was amended on the lines of the British Patent Law (1852) and re-enacted in 1859. The monopoly granted to the inventor was known as "exclusive privileges"

ON February 28, 1856, the Government of India promulgated legislation to grant what was then termed as "exclusive privileges for the encouragement of inventions of new manufactures". On March 3, 1856, a civil engineer, George Alfred DePenning of 7, Grant's Lane, Calcutta petitioned the Government of India for grant of exclusive privileges for his invention — "An Efficient Punkah Pulling Machine". On September 2 , DePenning, submitted the Specifications for his invention along with drawings to illustrate its working. These were accepted and the invention was granted the first ever Intellectual Property protection in India. DePenning, submitted petitions for two more inventions that same year — No. 2 and No. 4 of 1856 under the Act and in the years to follow several patents were granted by the Calcutta Patent Office to this prodigious inventor.

Having secured his place in Indian history, George Alfred DePenning could well have rested. But he did not. The entrepreneur in him saw other inventors struggling with the process involved in patenting new inventions and he saw the possibility of representing them as a Patent Agent. And so in 1856, the firm of DePenning & DePenning was born. Today, exactly 150 years on, not only does the firm continue to exist, but has grown to become one of the largest attorney firms devoted exclusively to the protection of Intellectual Property Rights with an impressive list of clients from many parts of the world. The firm has always had a member of the DePenning family at the helm. Started initially in Calcutta, the firm relocated its headquarters to Chennai in 1987 and today has branches in Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi.

The interesting fact is i could not retrive the patent document from the indian patent office website. when i did a little search i obtained the patent document from the Depenning& Depenning Company website. Its an indispensable wealth of india and i am happy that Depenning company has preserved the copy of patent.